Roundel Zone

Texas singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen, probably best known for “The Road Goes On Forever And The Party Never Ends” (covered by Steve Earle), closes his album West Textures with the song “It’s The Little Things.” It sounds like a sweet, intimate little love number, until you listen closely to the lyrics and realize that what he’s singing is, “It’s the little things… that piss me off.”

This past year was a big one for the BMW Car Club of America; the BMW CCA was founded in 1969, thus 2014 marked the Club’s 45th anniversary! We did not rest on our laurels, however, as we set out on a year of changing our online image. It all started with Satch reaching out and hiring me as the new Roundel Weekly online editor.

Happy new year to you all! Work on both the Shark (the ’79 635CSi) and the Z3 slowed down over the holidays, as I was in Colombia for a week with my extended family on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. We stayed in a hacienda in coffee country—the compartment of Qindio, roughly equidistant from the three largest cities of Medellin, Bogota, and Cali—took day trips through the spectacular countryside, and were fed incredibly well.

Nope—not gonna do it. I know what the calendar says; I know that January 1st is the day after tomorrow, but I refuse to take the easy way out and write about New Year’s resolutions. All the writers in the English-speaking world can tell you how they will improve their lives in the coming year, but not me.

We interrupt our sort-out-the-Shark series for this important repair. Several weeks ago, I described my new job at Bentley Publishers, my new commute into Cambridge—and the irony that I, the BMW guy, was likely going to need to perform said commute in my beat-to-hell Suburban, because of the eleven cars I own, seven are Hagerty cars that can’t be used to drive a daily commute (not that I’d want to pull them out in the winter anyway); Maire Anne’s Honda Fit is, well, Maire Anne’s Honda Fit; my 325xiT wagon has been usurped by my son Ethan; and I can’t realistically be expected to drive the Z3 through the winter, right? Particularly when it has 138,000 miles, a thermostat that’s stuck open (runs cold), and has had no systematic cooling system sort-out whatsoever.